Year of the faux protester

Pressure groups have become adept at clothing themselves in the fabric of voters' discontent.

By Lenore Taylor

December 24, 2011 — 3.00am

It was was a very, very shouty year for Australian politics. But our shouting was not primarily the kind employed by the type of protesters who earned a collective international accolade as Time magazine's ''person of the year''.

Speaking about the rise of peaceful and violent dissent on almost every continent, Time's managing editor, Rick Stengel, said the award had gone to ''the protester'' because ''they dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear-gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change.''

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Australians don't have to brave tear or bullets gas to achieve democracy, but our political system is not functioning in a way that voters seem to like.

Some 56 per cent of us are dissatisfied with the Prime Minister and 57 per cent dissatisfied with the Opposition Leader.

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The runaway winner in the 2011 popularity stakes appears to be ''none of the above''. But, despite that dissatisfaction and despite a great deal of noise, ours was more the year of the faux protest.

As it ends with the sorry politicking over asylum policy - even though there is a real danger of more boats sinking and more people drowning - it is clear not much has changed at all. Not for the better, anyway.

Some of those taking to the streets in Australia, from the ''Occupy'' protesters in Melbourne and Brisbane and Sydney to the anti-carbon-tax convoys, were genuinely seeking some kind of change. But Stengel's description doesn't match most of the shouting that has been happening here.

Here, the shoutiness has been altogether more disingenuous, more confected in substance, more contrived in tone and, at year's end, it seems not to be giving vent to voters' disgust and disillusionment with ''politics as usual'', but adding to their despair.

In large part, it's a result of the shock and unfamiliarity of a hung Parliament, a government which has stumbled through the year with as many mistakes as achievements and an opposition determined never to let it achieve any authority or legitimacy.

Tony Abbott has openly called for a ''people's revolt''. His ''blood oaths'', in fact his entire political strategy, has been to remain in election campaign mode and never let this Parliament settle into a political debate with a normal mid-term tone and tenor. And he's been pretty successful at it.

In some part our shoutiness has probably been amplified by a 24-hour media cycle with an insatiable demand for soundbites and a limited capacity for facts and analysis.

It may also be because some of the shouting has really been a new form of lobbying which has prospered in the hung Parliament and the sour political mood.

Despite copping the blame for the dire state of the Australian political debate, Parliament has, in fact, functioned as parliaments are supposed to - with the government negotiating the passage of almost all its proposed legislation.

But, because more than one party has been involved in approving each measure, the influence peddlers have had to shift tactics.

In a parliament where one major party had a majority, for example, the clubs and pubs industry would have responded to plans to tackle problem gambling in ways that jeopardised their profits by having a quiet word in the ear of some ministers and senior advisers.

A few fact sheets about how many members the clubs had in each marginal electorate and how much of their enormous takings they gave to kiddies' sport and a gentle reminder about their extremely generous donations to political parties and, hey presto, their problem would be solved.

But, so long as the Tasmanian independent, Andrew Wilkie, held a deciding vote, that old approach didn't work very well.

So they set about one of the most effectively ruthless ''grassroots'' lobbying campaigns in recent memory.

And, whatever side of the mandatory pre-commitment debate you are on, whatever you think of the policy, the marketing genius of the campaign is the way it gathers up ordinary voters' disillusionment with politicians and with the way politics panders to vested interests, and uses it to the benefit of a vested interest - namely, the protection of the profits of pubs and clubs.

The shouting against the carbon tax was, at least in some part, a similar phenomenon.

The chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia, Mitch Hooke, put it succinctly in a letter to his members asking for more money to fight the tax, which was reported by Marcus Priest in The Australian Financial Review in August. ''Over the period of the past four years, there has been a profound shift in the manner of public policy development and implementation,'' Hooke wrote.

''The new paradigm is one of public contest through the popular media, more so than rational, considered, effective consultation and debate.''

The cash he was looking for was to go to the so-called Trade and Industry Alliance, a lobby group set up by groups opposed to the tax - the Minerals Council, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Food and Grocery Council.

These groups are obviously entitled to put their point of view, but again the ads tapped into the sullen political mood by using ''ordinary punters'' to argue the tax would hurt them and their families and imperil their jobs.

Needless to say, it didn't mention the income tax cuts, pension increases or other benefits offered as compensation to those on modest incomes.

The casting brief for the ads, also reported in the AFR, said the cast should ''be representative of a broad cross-section of Australia … the viewer must care about them, relate to them, or find them credible. So therefore no eccentrics or 'tough nuts'.'' Not tough nuts, then, like the business leaders and industry lobbyists whose interests the ads were actually advancing, for example.

Hooke, of course, had first-hand knowledge of ''public contest through the popular media'', having shouted so loud against the Rudd government's original mining super profits tax, with a little help from the industry's $22 million, that he knocked off the tax in its original form and helped bring down a prime minister.

Many people are genuinely against the tax, either because they don't accept the evidence of global warming, or because they don't believe Australia should act without more effort by other countries, or because they don't agree with using a market mechanism.

They have, of course, a democratic right to express those views. But climate sceptic groups were greatly assisted in organisation and mobilisation by websites and organisations with close links to the Coalition, channelling and amplifying legitimate voices of community dissent for political gain.

Perhaps that's why the sceptics at the rallies seemed to glide over the fact the Coalition's formal policy position is to accept the science of climate change and the need for Australia to reduce emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

Perhaps that's why they were so willing to use Julia Gillard's broken carbon tax promise as a vehicle for a much broader political attack on the government's legitimacy and the Prime Minister's moral authority.

In his penultimate blog for the year, Abbott's parliamentary secretary Senator Cory Bernardi summed up his 2011 in a way which would appear to sit uncomfortably with Coalition policy.

''Emissions have continued to rise, the few dams we have are full again, the Earth has stopped warming and the deceivers in the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarmist industry are increasingly exposed for what they are. By my count, it's a happy ending to the apocalypse scenario and I think it would make an excellent movie. I even have a title in mind. Perhaps it could be called An Inconvenient Truth,'' he wrote.

And guess what. Over on a website associated with the Consumers and Taxpayers Association - organisers of most of the anti-carbon tax rallies - they've made one. Well, a web video at least, called An Inconvenient Carbon Tax. It features small-business people explaining how they are very committed to the environment and doing the right thing by the planet, but are just a bit concerned about our impending economic armageddon.

The business owners have genuine concerns, but the video is clearly part of an organised political campaign.

The political mood is one of dissent and disengagement.

But many of those apparently giving voice to the alienated citizen or the disillusioned voter are using the temper of the times for their own economic or political gain.

When it comes to 2012's shouting, whatever the viewpoint or the issue, let's hope the genuine begins to drown out the confected.